Messing About On the River

16.01.09 - Once in Manila we'd planned to head to Donsol, but the flights were too expensive so we headed to Puerto Princesa (using the rather wonderful Cebu Pacific, without whom it would have been a nightmare getting around the Philippines).

We checked into the House of Rose, as the fan dorm was far cheaper than anything else we could find in PP. The first day we spent walking around the city, which was nice enough, and along the coast line.

The second day we had booked a trip to see the Underground River, billed as one of the Phillipines'leading tourist attractions and the world's longest accessible underground river. Our trip started eventfully; because the weather conditions were poor for accessing the river (which you do by small boats called bancas), the trip was to start one hour earlier than usual. Unfortunately the tour company hadn't told us this and so they arrived to find us barely out of bed! The other tour participants were very cross, as they'd been up since five!

Our tour guide was a friendly woman called Anna who was very obsequious in thanking us for visiting the country and PP in specific, and praising the Underground River. She told us that the road was a "natural massage" because it was so bumpy in places, but we'd had worse in Luzon so it wasn't too bad.

Because of the later start, we were the last people to get to Sabang to take the boat across to the river and so had a hefty weight. Sabang had a nice enough beach and looked pretty free from tourists bar the load waiting for boats.

When we got a boat, it was a nice, short but choppy trip to the river (apparently the day before a boat had sunk just in the bay by the river, though no one was hurt). We walked past monitor lizards and some very aggressive monkeys to the starting point for the river departure. The monkeys were far too used to humans and would seize on any plastic bag left lying around as a source of food and in one case jumped onto a bag that a surprised looking man was carrying for a tug of war.

You were put into smaller boats for the river trip, and once in the underground river the only light came from a big torch given to another passenger (who in our case couldn't find any of the cave formations!). We had a guide at the back pointing out interesting shaped rocks. I'm normally very cynical about such things, as people often take you to a rock supposedly shaped like one thing or another and I stare and stare but see nada. However, in the case of the Underground River, everything looked like the description - including Jesus and the Holy Trinity. The guide kept up a slightly irritating commentary as we went with lots of "you see, sir, maam" and delighted in telling us not to open our mouths when we looked up as we might swallow "bat sheet". And there were indeed lots of bats.

The underground river is something like 8.2km in but you only venture in a tiny amount of the way, so I suppose you could equally well visit a shorter underground river and have a similar experience. I found the river nice enough but I think the Philippines has nicer things going for it elsewhere.

After the river trip, we volunteered to walk to the lunch stop. I probably wouldn't recommend this to someone as it was a longer walk than expected, with the scenery not justifying the intense heat of walking through jungle. The path was also very up and down.

However, once we arrived back at Sabang we joined the groups in taking buffet lunch. The food wasn't plentiful or good quality in particular but it filled a hole.

We then headed back to Puerto Princesa and spent one more night there before catching a bus to El Nido the next day.

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